The Epic Fish Battle of Iburihashi

This post will be pretty picture-centric, as the story was similar to Wajima but the details changed.

After working Wednesday and Thursday, I planned to go south about 45 minutes on the train to Iburihashi with a bunch of JETs to see their one-night fish festival. It's a much smaller festival than Wajima, but much beloved by veteran JETs who've gone in previous years.

Quick aside: on Wednesday night I said goodbye to my predecessor, Simon. He was in my position for 3 years and is now moving to Seitama (near Tokyo) to work as a full English teacher in a British English school. He's 42 and from Liverpool, so our kids are going to have some adjusting to do--actually some of them have been calling me Simon, strangely enough. Perhaps they think every gaijin man is named Simon....

In any case, I can't thank him enough for all he's done for me in the past few weeks. I would have been lost without the help.


The first thing I noticed about Iburihashi was that it was tiny and absolutely silent near the train station.

I quickly realized that this was because probably the entire town was out at the festival. It was a much more intimate set up, with only two main floats and always one clear focus of action.

The progression of the festival was strikingly similar to Wajima, in that large groups of people carried something around on their shoulders chanting and then burned something at the end. However, this was a bit more focused. There were two massive fish floats, manned by a red team and a yellow team, as well as a mini float carried by kids off to the side. After a parade through the streets to the train station, the red and yellow fish engaged in a symbolic battle (although many of us were hoping for full-on ramming speed) and the loser was then carried to a bonfire at a shrine and immolated.

The red team included four JETs from the area, another example of amazing willingness to involve foreigners in a traditional festival

The younger, gaudier, and larger yellow team

These stops at the beer cart would prove to be devastating to the yellow team...

The fight is on!

After some of the fighting, there was a break for a performance by the children. You can see their fish off to the right. They performed a skit of the legend that inspires the festival, but it was difficult to understand for an outsider.

A sort of hip-hop/traditional dance form that's become popular in Japan, although I'm forgetting the name right now.

I wasn't really sure on the criteria by which the winner was determined, but I'm assuming it's some combination of speed, fluidity, and cool fish float moves. In any case, the underdog red team won! This was definitely partially because the younger yellow team got noticeably rip-roaring drunk. If you haven't ever seen a 40-foot fish sway around in the street like a wasted college guy, I highly recommend it.

The yellow team marches to the sacrifice.

Right before the final push.

One of the iconic images of our time...

Me and Colin with two completely random guys. Seriously, we met them a half second before this picture was taken.

The whole experience was fantastic again, but in a very different way, as it was so small and contained. I spent the night at a fellow JET's apartment and headed home in the morning. Along the train ride, I saw this somewhat surreal sight:

I'll have to go investigate at some point.

Check the video post that follows this one for videos of Wajima and Iburihashi!